There are some secrets that should never be divulged to any human being other than your bank manager. How much you fork out on hairdressing, for example, or the exact nature of bar bills.
While I’m generally a stickler for honesty in married life, no relationship is improved by sharing such details. So, I wasn’t surprised to learn, courtesy of research from the Co-op’s legal services, that one in three married people aged 65 or over keep some form of financial asset hidden from their spouse, with 14 per cent silently sitting on £50,000 ($100,137) or more of unknown savings.
If you keep your own money, you can spend it as you see fit. But you’re also responsible for your own debt.Credit: iStock
Too blooming right they do. Even those of us in our 50s can recognise the wisdom of this gambit. It’s one thing to pay your way and show largesse in wedded life (in fact, it should be obligatory), but quite another to reveal every last detail of your income and savings. There are plenty of people who appear profligate to casual observers, yet are surprisingly shrewd in establishing clandestine accounts with funds for birthday treats, holidays and egregious tax bills. (I’m speaking on behalf of a friend, you understand.) If your other half were to learn of such an arrangement, he might raid it for his own absurd priorities, like new brake pads for the car.
When I met my husband, 32 years ago, we were united in our scorn for joint bank accounts. We didn’t discuss the reasons, but I reckon both of us realised that our trivial expenditures wouldn’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny and shouldn’t be exposed to it. I didn’t want to know, or resent, how much he spent on Tamiya model Spitfires or bootleg Bob Dylan CDs, and he certainly was better off ignorant of my frock and chocolate habits. He will happily buy every Donna Leon thriller in hardback, while believing that taking a taxi, even in driving rain, is as decadent as splurging your hard-earned wedge on casinos and Playboys.
The fact is, we remain aligned on all key domestic finance-related issues and trust one another not to fritter our cash on dodgy investment schemes. Neither of us has had a credit card in three decades of married life, nor any loans outside our mortgage, as we both have a morbid fear of debt. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t regard our respective personal finances as a sacred mystery on a par with the Turin shroud.
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I remain glad that I was too shamefaced to tell him when I spent a grand on a Paula Rego lithograph 24 years ago, when we were struggling to make ends meet. But then the sum my husband inherited when his parents died remains equally hazy, allowing him to continue switching off the heating in all weathers except Met-certified blizzards. I’m just grateful that the bequest financed our loft conversion, while sensing it was also linked to the sudden appearance of a Persian carpet and a Lego model of the Tower of Orthanc from The Lord of the Rings.
In similar spirit, I have a “running away” fund in an undisclosed bank account, in the unlikely event I ever need to go the full Agatha Christie and go missing for 11 days – only to be found at a hotel in Harrogate, having registered under the name of my husband’s former girlfriend. I would not begrudge my spouse his own secret stash for flights of fantasy and sanity.
Individuals in a marriage need a degree of autonomy to maintain the respect of their spouse, which in turn entails some level of financial independence. It’s a good thing to be transparent, but far nobler to whip out rainy-day savings to fix the aircon and keep the family happy.
